What was Odyssey?

Recently I've been thinking a lot about my Camp Odyssey experience, which was transformative at the same time that it was difficult. Without comparing Odyssey to Peoples Temple, seeing that movie about Jonestown and reading Raven (which I got from the library) has me thinking about my own experience with "trying to change the world."


Camp Odyssey was an immersion diversity training for youth and adults. When I was on staff, I (and others, obviously) worked with youth entering 10th through 12th grades and examined all the "isms" - racism, sexism, heterosexism, prejudice against immigrants, ageism, and even touched on classism (when I moved back to California we were thinking about working more class issues into the curriculum). Everyone who attended was split into ethnic groups according to their identification, into gender groups, and into sharing circles which were carefully balanced for ethnic identity and gender. Each group would meet with each other group to talk about stereotypes and then the sharing circles would meet to process the experiences of the day. It is very difficult to explain, and it was really really intense.


One of the things I believed was that Odyssey was led by some amazing, fabulous, dedicated people who saw things clearly. I also felt like a lot of the "regular" staff people were pretty amazing as well - Odyssey consisted of two demanding weekends and one really demanding week each year and we all worked very hard during those times. Ironically, the person who was the Camp Director was not someone I believed was any of those things. He and I didn't like each other, and I thought it was because I was in the not-straight group and the only strongly-identified bi person in Camp for the time I was involved, which was about two years, I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. Also, I have a memory of heated disagreements between us, including at Advisory Council meetings when I was in the leadership circle.


I don't know where the curriculum came from, though some of it came from other diversity programs and some of it grew out of the work that had been going on. When I got involved in 1996 Odyssey had been around for about three years (it only lasted maybe two years after I left). There were several two or three day adult trainings a year, but Odyssey was really focused on the Camp for youth which lasted for one week in late June. After Camp in 1997 I "forgot" to turn in my script/agenda/curriculum and while I haven't looked at it in years I haven't been ready to shred it.


Hard as it was, I loved Odyssey. I thought the things we did were important and there are lessons I carry to this day. I wonder what the people who were 14 to 18 years old at the time think now of that experience (some of them are as old now as I was then). We had some guidelines that were posted on a banner in the main hall, and I have found them pretty good guidelines to live by, some of which I see now are woven together for me:

Be honest

Take risks - a hard one for me, being naturally risk-averse.

Respect others

Close the loop - it's not always easy to follow up when I think I've offended someone or when someone has offended me, but working it out means I don't have to fret about it anymore.

Take responsibility for Self - this ranges from going when I need to go to the bathroom to being responsible for doing something stupid or hurtful.

Use "I" statements - I joke that my favorite "I" statement is "I feel you are a jerk" but I've noticed I get heard more easily if I really do say "I feel X when Y" and "It's been my experience that..."


There's more to write about Odyssey but not today. Odyssey was hugely important part of my growing up, even though I was 27 when I got involved. I don't think I would be the person I am today if I hadn't had that experience.

Not too sure

I went to the first of two training sessions for Literacy Plus, a program that trains and matches tutors with adult non-readers. The training was from 9am to 4pm and we had a half-hour lunch. The trainer asked a few times if we wanted to take a break, but we all (nine women) declined, and I know this is because all of us were stressed out because the trainer kept saying how she was behind and was only giving us three or four minutes to do the exercises. We weren't a particularly chatty group, either. I think they either need to re-examine what they want us to learn in 13 hours or they need to make a more realistic schedule.


Anyway, I'm not sure I want to do it. I am feeling overwhelmed. Among the things we discussed today were learning styles (such as reading, writing, listening, moving) and examples of different teaching methods; the material we may have to cover with a given student ("when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking" and word families); and how to check reading comprehension, just for starters.


I'm also feeling some anxiety about the actual pairing and teaching part. Do I really want to teach? I'm not very patient, and I grew up in a pretty demanding educational environment.
The experience I've had with the Homework Help program has bored me at times and I must admit sometimes I feel judgmental toward "the schools," like the time I was doing long division with a child who didn't seem to know how to multiply. I said something about the long division thing to the trainer today, during a private conversation - for all I know she's already thinking I am not a suitable candidate to be a Literacy Plus tutor.


Now that I've taken one whole day of the two-day training I'm already feeling kind of obligated to follow through and be a tutor. They ask for a six-month commitment and generally I feel like I can do anything for six months (though I've been proven wrong a couple times), and the tutoring commitment is only one or two days a week, not five.


Because I was thinking about this, the best part of the training today was when two tutor/student pairs came in to talk about their experiences and to answer questions. Both tutors have been working with Literacy Plus for about three years and both students had been in the program for about a year; everyone praised the LP staff and each other, and the students expressed a lot of gratitude for the program. I asked the question so all four could answer: What did you feel uncertain about when you started tutoring or started the program?


The first tutor answered with what I know I wanted to hear. She said that she didn't think she would be good enough, that she would do something wrong, and that she would let her students down. Then she went on to say that the students "are so hungry to learn" that you can't really let them down, because anything you teach them is something they want to know. The second student said that she was so excited to start learning that she hadn't slept the night before her first tutoring session. In that way, I suppose, it is really different than compulsory education; no one is forcing these students to come into the program, and I know that it is easier and more interesting to teach an engaged learner.


At the moment I am still undecided, however.

Uno amigo de la pluma

I received an email from one of the bartenders at Playa Fiesta, Charly. I'd sent him and the owners Hayward postcards I purchased at Long's.


Charly suggests in his email that we can practice each other's languages by writing. He says, "You'll try to write all your email in Spanish and I'll try to reply in English, later I'll write you everything in Spanish and you'll reply in English and little by little we will see our spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, I think so that this way our advances will be great very soon I'm sure."


His English is much better than my Spanish, but I think he is right. Writing Spanish should be a little easier than speaking it, since I'll be able to consult my diccionario (dictionary) and my libro de la clase (textbook) for vocabulary and conjugations without actually stopping the conversation. Fortunately for me, spelling in Spanish is much less complex and irregular than it is in English. Have you ever noticed that "phonics," which is a reading system that teaches children to connect letters and sounds, is not spelled "fonics"?


I've never had a pen-pal before. I would have been a great pen-pal when I was a kid, because I liked to write and read, and I didn't have a close friend at school so pen-palling would have given me something to do at lunchtime. I also made up a lot of stuff. I think my fourth grade teacher tried to set my class up with the class of a friend of hers in Rome. I don't think the Roman class wrote back to us.


Having a pen-pal to whom I write in Spanish will probably alleviate the obligation I feel about being in a Spanish class this term. I was going to enroll in Spanish 1B at Chabot Community College this semester, but it began before I knew I wouldn't be going back to CSU East Bay. I'm hopeful that Charly and I do write to each other for a long time.



Besides, No found a house to rent in the same area as Playa Fiesta and it's always good to have a friend who's local.

Ahhh, back at the dance studio. We've been away for two weeks, and it seems much longer.


Our regular dance teacher is out of town today, at her grandmother's birthday party. We had our lesson with our other regular dance teacher (who, I suspect, will be more and more regular for us as KT's responsibilities at the studio grow) and worked on Silver 1 waltz and rumba. The magic of the Arthur Murray System is, of course, that all the dances are interrelated, so we learned essentially the same step in both dances. Except of course that they are completely different. (-:


It felt good to get back to waltz. It feels like a long time since we've danced any waltz, and it's been a long time since we learned a new step, because we so recently had our check-out for Bronze 4. We've been dancing a lot of salsa recently, and merengue (ma-ren-gay); at our last lesson that's all we did and then of course in Puerto Vallarta we danced even more. Zirpu and I even led a couple of merengue/conga lines, complete with tunnels, because we are, after all, Arthur Murray Hayward dancers and that's what we do at parties in Hayward.

Hayward is in the house!

I taught several men and a few couples some basic salsa. One couple was really motivated to learn and so in half an hour I got them doing basics, turns, and the cross-body lead. Another couple sounded motivated to learn, but the wife kept saying that she "couldn't dance." I believe that if you can count to eight, you can dance (and for salsa you don't even need to count to eight; six will do fine), and I felt like saying "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours." We had fun in the lesson anyway - lots of laughter, and dance is a means to pleasure.


Zirpu was out there dancing with the ladies who didn't have dance partners. He said his only regret for the week was that they didn't play more music he could dance to, because there were women who wanted a spin on the dance floor. This is how cool, in all senses of the word, my husband is: